Keep Me In Sight

by Rachel Blackledge

  I have no idea. But I’m going to fight to keep that recording intact. I keep moving backwards, away from Erin and the approaching train, watching Dan, hoping he can come back online sooner rather than later.

  If I distract her long enough, maybe Dan can summon enough strength to get that knife out of her hand. She’s inching toward me, away from Dan. My plan seems to be working.

  But then my heel catches on something substantial, a piece of driftwood maybe, and I’m stumbling, falling backwards, watching Erin hurry toward me. A spray of sand blows into my eyes and blinds me.

  Erin rams her shoulder into my diaphragm on the way down, jolting the breath out of my body. I land and roll onto my side, trying to clear the biting sand from my eyes and gulp some air. Meanwhile, she rifles through my coat, trying to grab my phone. I curl into a fetal position, protecting it from her grasping hand.

  Then I feel a cold sharp sensation against my cheek that instantly stills me. I freeze, eyes locked on the blade that fills my vision with terror. I’m thinking about the tough ridge of a scar that I’m going to wear on my face for the rest of my life if I move. I’m thinking about permanent disfigurement, when I feel her fingers clasp around my phone, tearing it from my grip, and wince when I feel a thin line of pressure around my neck as my earphones snap out of the jack. I want to get up and fight, but fear keeps me rooted to the ground.

  Erin straightens, my phone in her hand. "Thanks," she spits.

  Tears of loss sting my eyes. She won. The recording is stored on my phone. After she destroys it, I’ll lose her full confession, and we’ll be back to he said/she said backed by her mountain of evidence. Oh, and my police statement that I kindly provided. Can I redact that?

  In any event, Dan will go to jail. His career will go up in smoke. I’ll be relegated to weekend visits, sitting across a plexiglass barrier, pressing my hand against his.

  A shadow moves behind Erin. Dan. He’s lumbering, but the deep crease on his forehead tells me he’s wearing The Look. Bad news for Erin. I keep my eyes glued on her, afraid that the quick flick of my gaze will betray him. She’s turning away. She’ll see him.

  "Hey!" I yell above the wind.

  She turns to me, an automatic reaction, just as Dan’s muscled arm snakes around her neck. Her eyes fly wide, one hand tearing at his forearm. With the other she takes a backward stab at him, but the tip of the knife catches his jacket and shreds the pocket instead. I scramble up to standing and inch closer to her.

  Erin suddenly twists to the side, but before she can strike again, I land a grip on her slashing hand and dig the knife handle out of her closed fist.

  The blade feels substantial and powerful. A surge of relief rushes through me, now that the outcome is tipped in my favor.

  Hands shaking, I point the blade at Erin, careful not to touch her. Adrenaline is flaming through my body. I hardly feel the cold anymore. What does it feel like to stab someone? Will the sensation even register against my palm?

  "Careful with that," she says, nodding to the knife. "Don’t want to kill anybody." And she laughs, which is really more of a high shrieking sound that speeds my pulse.

  She can laugh all she wants. The tables have turned now. I’m the one making demands. "Give me the phone," I’m saying, but the dead gleam in her eyes and her distinct lack of fear sends chills down my body. I can’t stab her. I can’t take her life. And she seems to understand my moral and legal dilemma. All I can do is bluff and hope. "Give me the phone!" I yell, carefully placing the blade against the cords in her neck. Be careful, I tell myself.

  Erin speaks up, eyes narrowed into slits. Her dark eyes meet mine. "Go ahead and slit my throat. I’d like to see you explain that to the police."

  I pull my lips tight against my teeth and press the blade closer, praying she won’t move or that my hand won’t slip. I’m watching the hairline edge of the blade press into a crease of her skin. And I’m panting, trying to fight back hot tears of defeat. I can’t do it. I can’t hurt her. Not with a knife.

  Finally, I drop my hand.

  Erin smiles, watching me, her mouth curling into a sneer.

  "Drop the phone!" Dan yells, shaking her. And when he’s done jerking her left and right, she laughs again, her high voice carrying on the wind. She’s laughing at my incompetence and my inability to shunt aside my conscience so I can slit her neck.

  The horn blares. The train headlight bears down on us, a monocle of blinding light. In the bright light, I imagine seeing the knife handle sticking out of her back, between both shoulder blades. I imagine her reaching behind, grasping for the handle, trying to pull it out, but it’s just out of reach. She’s twisting and fighting, and she’s losing her balance . . .

  I blink away that version of my future because it will never happen. She’s right. If I try to bury that blade into her back, even if I merely cut her, I’ll be tried for attempted murder or something equally as horrific.

  Dan weakens; his grip slips. Erin breaks away.

  Frustrated, I turn away and scream, heaving that useless knife into the edge of darkness, watching the metal blade spin and disappear into the shadows where it can neither hurt nor help anyone.

  I turn to her, panting, eyes alive to her next move. The horn blares again, warning us away. We both look at the oncoming train. Erin moves forward, my phone in her hand, silhouetted by the train’s headlight as blinding as stadium lights.

  Erin turns back to me, raising her voice above the clamor. "Sorry your big plan didn’t work out, Brynn!"

  Then she turns and walks toward the train. The train thunders closer, growing in size, towering over us with its deadly unstoppable speed. Erin steps closer still, with my phone in her hand, the small rectangle of hope that can save Dan.

  "Stop, Erin!" I call out, but the train’s horn blasts, loud and deafening, swallowing up my voice. I should heed the warning and move back, out of the way, but there’s still a chance.

  As she watches the train approach, timing her moment to dispatch my phone, her arm cocked back, I rush up and grab hold of her hand. But the sucking wind of the passing train almost knocks me off my feet.

  "For God’s sake! Let go of it!" Erin cries.

  "No, I won’t!"

  I’m fighting for balance, for the recording, for justice, for Dan, and I’m bracing my feet against the sand, trying to gain some leverage, while the deafening roar of the wheels clattering over the rails and the squealing of hydraulic brakes rattle me to the bone. But I hold fast to that phone.

  Erin screams and tears at my hair, pulling me toward the thundering train, while hot pain sears down my head and neck. She punches me, trying to get me to let go. Then I gouge my thumbs into her palm, trying to break her grip. But she’s a madwoman, screaming, pulling me toward the train, and gaining the upper hand.

  The train thunders, sucking us closer with its blinding velocity. It’s a freight train, not the light rail commuter type that’s here and gone in a flash. This is a heavy-duty worker with lots of cars, an unending amount seemingly, rushing past and pulling us closer.

  I have to get my phone. I have to save that recording.

  "Brynn!" I hear Dan’s small voice from what sounds like another dimension.

  Erin jerks me closer to the rails. The whirling axles loom enormous in my eyes, the wind whipping around me in a blurry vortex.

  "Stop, Erin! You’re going to kill someone!"

  "Whatever it takes," I hear her say.

  She’s pulling me, heaving me toward the clattering axles, toward death, because she has nothing left to lose.

  If she can’t destroy her own confession, she’ll be looking at life behind bars. If I happen to be collateral damage, well, she’ll just dig up that knife and use her old line of self-defense. My prints on are the handle. She’ll have the troublesome detail of Dan’s testimony, but I’m sure she’ll think of something.

  Like Polaroid snapshots, my life flashes before my eyes. But instead of happy memories, I see Dan and my family ravaged w
ith grief because I was too nice, too eager to put everyone else above myself. I see Dan convicted, carrying a felony charge for a crime he didn’t commit. And I see Erin walking away, free to destroy someone else’s life.

  "Not on my watch," I say, gritting my teeth. "No more Mrs. Nice Gal."

  I crook my elbow and slam it into her ribcage. Her grip suddenly breaks. I grab hold of my phone, and scramble backwards, relief surging through me.

  But she’s falling now. She’s teetering on the heels of her feet, pin-wheeling her arms, trying to win back her balance, while the train shudders behind her, a blur of flashing metal and blaring horn. I only wanted justice. Not a death.

  "Grab my hand!" I cry, reaching for her.

  Her eyes are huge and scared, her mouth making a perfect O as she leans just out of reach, her fingertips brushing mine. Like the tail of a scorpion, the last few cars whip by and strike, pulling her inexorably forward, sucking her into the vortex.

  The train thunders past, leaving us with stunned silence.

  And Erin’s mangled body.

  52

  DAN

  We’re in Brynn’s car, driving to the nearest emergency room. I can see from the wide blank look in her wide eyes that she’s in shock so I put my hand on her knee and squeeze. I have never loved her more.

  I pull out my phone and check for messages. I’d already called the police and told them about the accident. Where to find the body. And I left my contact details with them for the inevitable exhaustive follow up. No messages yet. That’s good news. I’m not exactly ready for an interrogation.

  Pain flames through my body. I hiss and set the phone down on my lap. She looks over, worried.

  She reaches for my shoulder. "Are you okay?"

  "Yep," I say, trying to downplay the seriousness of the matter. Depending on the cleanliness of blade, I could be looking at blood poisoning, sepsis, or a nice Staph infection. I have to go with the lowest common denominator. We’re dealing with Erin, after all.

  Brynn doesn’t know, but this isn’t the first time Erin has pulled a knife on me, though it is the first time she used it. In fact, the knife episode precipitated our breakup, but the police incident was the final straw. Erin couldn’t understand that I was unwilling to ‘forgive’ her for waggling a carving knife at me.

  I should have known that I was dealing with somebody dangerous, somebody unstable who should be dumped with a little more finesse, but I wanted her out of my life. Stat.

  I grit my teeth. A pain of regret spreads through me. There’s so much that Brynn doesn’t know, stuff I never wanted her to know, stuff that I never wanted to resurrect. I just figured that if I left the bones undisturbed, then they would sink down the deep depths of my internal ocean, never to be thought of again. So I fought for secrecy, and the bones did sink down, but instead of disappearing, they began to fester.

  There’s something else too. I was ashamed to tell Brynn, this brave magical creature, who had journeyed across the country alone in her car, that I’d been in an abusive relationship. It’s one of those weird things where you have to google it to find out if it applies to you.

  No man ever thinks of himself as the type to get abused. And what is abuse anyway exactly? Is it getting insulted? Nagged? Does brandishing a knife really qualify if the other party doesn’t draw blood? Or if the other party is a woman?

  Of course Brynn wanted to know about my past relationships, but I wanted to her to think of me as brave and dashing, not loathe me for being weak and abused.

  "We’re almost there," she says, her hand on mine. I wriggle my thumb out from her grip and hold her hand back. I never want her to let me go.

  "All good over here," I say. She shoots me a worried glance. "But I don’t think she got my gut. The cut is too low." I desperately hope so anyway.

  "Mmhm," she says, taking her hand back and placing it back on the steering wheel. She needs to focus on driving, and she has a tricky exit coming up. She glances over at me. I can tell she is waiting for more information.

  "Okay, you’re debriefed," I say with a smile, but wince as we drive over a bump.

  We sit in silence for a few moments, while Brynn drives.

  "There’s so many things I didn’t tell you, Brynn. And I’m sorry about that."

  She gives me a side-look. "You don’t have a love child somewhere, do you?"

  "What? God, Brynn. No!"

  "Rabies?"

  Ah, she got me. I want to laugh but it hurts too much. "Yeah, my vaccinations are out of date. I forgot to tell you."

  She pulls into a brightly lit hospital parking lot. "We’ll get you up to date," she says with a hopeful smile.

  It seems so surreal that moments ago, I was down on my knees on that dark isolated beach, staring down the barrel of a felony assault charge, figuring out how to get Erin to step into my trap. And now . . . it’s all over.

  Thanks to Brynn.

  Of course, I had my own plan catch and kill plan in play. But that happy ending was dependent on the legal system, which may or may not find in my favor. And how many years and hundreds of thousands of dollars would I have thrown away trying to catch a lucky break? Too many. Too many to count.

  She helps me out of the car, and I hobble inside, Brynn under my arm, propping me up. As soon as I get this wound stitched up, I vow to tell her everything that happened the night of my farewell party and never keep her in the dark again.

  53

  DAN

  I wake up in a hospital room, the vertical blinds to my right are pulled shut, the curtain to my left drawn closed. I feel like I’m in a suffocating cocoon, tied down with IV lines and hand restraints.

  Groggily, I struggle to lift my arm and maneuver my hand into my fuzzy field of vision. No hand restraints. I drop my arm down, exhausted, and a fiery rim of pain blazes up my body so I reach for the big red help button and push it.

  Then I close my eyes, pulling in shallow breaths, trying to manage the pain.

  In—calm and relaxation.

  Out—jagged pain.

  The door opens. I hear footsteps belonging to a number of people. The curtain swishes aside and Brynn rushes to my bedside, eyes wide with concern, followed by two nurses. The older woman checks my IV drip bag and asks about pain levels, while the younger one hangs back.

  I over-estimate my pain levels and watch them leave, hoping that they’ll hurry up with the goods. I’m post-surgery. From experience, I know that the intravenous good stuff will wear off, leaving me in limbo land until I can get ahead of the pain again.

  But I feel stronger somehow with Brynn sitting next to me, both of her hands clamped onto mine.

  "Hey," I say, trying to squeeze her hand back, but I don’t have much strength.

  "Ssh," she says, stroking my forehead, brushing aside my hair. From the soft look in her eyes, I can tell she doesn’t hate me, but this whole thing isn’t over yet. Committed to the vow I made pre-surgery, I want to tell her everything, even if it means dousing that pretty expression on her face.

  "How are you feeling?" she asks.

  "Could be better . . . Did you get me vaccinated?"

  "All up to date," she says with a weak smile. In her eyes, I see that she’s filled with sadness and regret. Well, that makes two of us. "The doctor said that your surgery went well. Your intestines are okay, but the cut went straight through your abdominal muscles." Her eyes sparkle a little with wry humor. "Looks like you’ll have a nice caesarean scar."

  "No more bikinis?" I ask, falling into her eyes.

  "Not for a while anyway." The corner of her mouth curls up. "But you always did look good in a one piece."

  "That means a lot coming from you." I look away when I catch a smirk on her lips, already thinking about my next question that fills me with dread. "And the police? Are they here?"

  "They were. They’re still investigating obviously, but my phone was recording the whole time. They heard everything . . . including Erin’s confession. They understand that she set
you up. And they’re treating this as an accidental death."

  My whole body feels lighter somehow, more buoyant.

  The nurses are back with a wheelie computer station and two blue pills in a tiny plastic cup. The veteran nurse shows the younger one how to scan the barcode on my ID bracelet and enter the medicine information into the system. Then she hands me the cup, and I swallow the pills dry.

  They leave the room after some fussing over the machinery. Then the door clicks shut, and it’s just Brynn and I.

  The pills are already nibbling on the edges of pain, making me feel vague and grateful. Now, for the hard part.

  "You asked so many times about my relationship with Erin," I continue. "And I—I didn’t want you to know anything about it because it was really hard for me to admit that—that I was in an abusive relationship. It was so hard for me to think of myself as a victim of domestic abuse. But I was." I gesture down to my taped up belly. "This isn’t the first time she pulled a knife on me."

  "Oh babe," Brynn says, scooting her chair closer to my bedside. "I had no idea."

  "I know you didn’t," I say with wan smile. "I made sure of it."

  "What else did she do? I mean beside the police incident thing."

  I fight a knee-jerk reaction to deflect. But I’m not that guy anymore. My silence is what got us into this big mess to begin with. Brynn had every reason to doubt me. Where there is silence, suspicion grows, but not anymore. Not with me.

  I decide to start at the very top, and work my way down through the relationship, detailing the first signs of control, of isolating me from my friends, pulling me away from my mom, and the police incident.

  Erin worked fast. Erin always had a fresh batch of tears to dispatch. She accused me of not taking her side, not protecting her. Then came the knife incident. The wine bottle incident. And the much contested punch-not-a-punch. The breakup was nasty. And then she started stalking me. Showing up at random places.